address the impact, opportunities, and challenges that technology has had on HRD professionals: Human Resources Development Report, CU

Human Resources Development Assignment 1 Essay:

 Introduction:

Human Resource Development (HRD) is a concept that refers to how organisations help develop and grow the employees working for them. Surbi (2017) states that HRD’s main purpose is to develop workers ‘ skills, knowledge and competency when performing their duties’. Due to the rapid advancement of technology, most people have had to change the way that they live and work. In addition to this, it has also presented new opportunities and challenges for the HRD industry as well.

This report will address the impact, opportunities, and challenges that technology has had on HRD professionals and will also provide recommendations to assist them to utilise the technology advancements and overcoming these issues.

How Technology has impacted Human Resource Development (HRD):

Due to the fast-growing advancement of technology, people working in the HRD department have had to change the way they work but have also used technology to improve and develop their working methods as well. Profile Asia Pacific (2017) explains that HRD employees will have a ‘huge impact on the HR department of an organisation’ as it allows them to ‘improve their internal processes, core competencies, relevant markets and organisational structure as a whole’.

Technology such as Online learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been implemented into HRD to help them improve certain processes such as the training of employees. As a result, this will allow the HRD industry to collect data on things such as past employee performance to forecast what will occur in the future and make better decisions. However, Adam (2022) explains that in certain industries such as manufacturing, the advancement of technology has harmed workers who are working in industries such as Travel websites such as Expedia and Kayak ‘which have eliminated the need for human travel agents’ as well as booksellers ‘such as Amazon who have forced booksellers to close their doors permanently’.

As a result, employees working in these industries will need to come up with countermeasures to keep up with these advancements. However, Alison (2022) emphasises that while it is important to utilise technology in HRD, it is also important for them to develop their skills as well such as emotional intelligence, cultural intelligence and problem solving as it will help employees become ‘more reliable, meet their deadlines and complete tasks’.

As a result, the impact that technology has had on HRD has had the following opportunities and challenges:

Opportunities for HRD:

As previously shown, Ashley (2019) has shown that due to unprecedented factors such as the Covid-19 pandemic, the implementation of online learning for HRD has been on the rise to help train employees through the use of things such as ‘online training and courses’ and that this will teach them ‘how to use the tools that are available for them in a way that they can reap all the benefits of the tool itself’.

Furthermore, Ashley (2019) also explains that the use of technology will also allow HRD to allow the business to find their ‘balance between using humans to complete a task and using technology to improve the organisation’s system and processes’ (Lipman 2019). As a result, Ashley (2019) states that this will help HRD professionals to conquer certain organisational challenges such as ‘helping cultivate a company culture and helping the employees to learn to leave their comfort zones and interact more positively with their colleagues’.

In addition to this, since innovative technology is started to be used more frequently by organisations, it has become ‘an integral part of improving communication in the workplace’ (Park Point University Online 2019). Research has shown that ‘one in three members of the American workforce are millennials’ and this age group ‘grew up adapting to new forms of technology for communication and normally welcomes it into the workplace’ (Park Point University Online 2019). This communication technology will also be crucial for the current HRD industry as most employees are currently maintaining a balance of working from home and working from the office so a universal communication platform will be crucial for them to use.

Recommendation:

Since the emergence of new technology, the HRD communities will need to design their systems and processes are designed in such a way that the new technologies will be able to help improve employee efficiency and productivity. For example, with the current covid-19 pandemic, Dave (2021) explains that organisations have ‘invested in technology to help employees toggle between working from the office and working from home which will help minimise the recurrence of issues such as ‘labour shortages and employee resignations’.

One way that workers in HRD can manage organisational issues is to create a specialised employee assistance program that allows the organisation to track and manage the needs of the employees and the organisation as a whole and implement programs that help direct employees to the relevant resources that they will need. As a result, doing this will allow the program to understand the organisation and employees’ needs and match the relevant resources to them more effectively and more efficiently.

Furthermore, the program should also have modules that will help stimulate the employees such as brain training and virtual reality games which will stimulate the employee’s interest in working and will also help improve their approach to solving any problems when working.’

In addition to this, with this program, the employees should also be able to modify the way that they can communicate with the program in ways such as using video recording or conferencing or a virtual assistant. This method of communication will make it easier for the workers to get help with anything as they have multiple forms of communicating their issues.

Threats of technology to HRD:

Despite technology mainly having a positive impact on the HRD industry, there are also certain challenges that they need to address.

The main issue that the HRD industry needs to look that is how new automation will eventually replace the manual work of employees. This is because most organisations normally look at improving their efficiency in production or providing services and it will likely ‘create a culture of fear for job safety’ (Human Resources Online 2019). Studies have shown that ‘40% of Australian jobs have a high probability of becoming automated in the next 10-15 years’ (Human Resources Online 2019)  which means organisations will need to ‘adapt to different business needs such as re-training, restructuring, and introducing new technologies to staff’ (Human Resources Online 2019) and the HRD department will be playing an important role in ‘overseeing this transition period’ (Human Resources Online 2019).

Another issue that will occur is that the employees, due to the implementation of technology, they will need to commit to ‘continual learning of things such as ‘upskilling, professional development and staying on top of industry trends and technologies’ (Human Resources Online 2019). Research has shown that ‘technology and workforce change is contributing to a high demand for skilled HRD professionals’ (Human Resources Online 2019) which, in turn, has resulted in the postgraduate HR degree holders being eligible to ‘earn over US$160,000 per annum and have increased career opportunities and development’ (Human Resources Online 2019).

Recommendations:

To ensure that employees are not displaced from their jobs when automation makes organisations replace them for that job, HRD professionals should make it a point of retraining them through different skills. Research has shown that although ‘75 million present job roles are going to be displaced by the division of labour between humans, machines and algorithms’ (Airslate team 2020), there will be an additional ‘133 million jobs that will emerge’ such as ‘Data analysts, Software and Application Developers and E-commerce and Social Media Specialists’ (Airslate team 2020). In addition to this, jobs that distinctly require the services of humans are expected to grow as well.

For the continual learning challenge for the HRD industry, Pradip (2020) advises that HRD professionals can try creating a ‘professional development plan for each employee’ to help them ‘devote time to training, coaching opportunities and the ability to attend events such as team workshops and lunch-and-learn meetings’.  Pradip (2020) also explains that this is an important goal for HRD professionals to work towards achieving as studies have shown that ‘42% of employees leave an organisation because they don’t find any learning opportunities’. Pradip (2020) explains that this is because the employees recognise that ‘continuous learning is critical to their personal growth and performance and they expect their employers to reinvent themselves to fit their needs’.

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